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One of the things I’ve come to realise over my time as a manager is that things are rarely as bad as you think they are. Sometimes it can be overwhelming when you have those inevitable challenges that all managers face. On the other side of the coin though, things are rarely as good as …

I’m a big fan of Basketball and I try to read as much about basketball coaching as possible – as there are striking lessons to be learned about management too. Coach John Wooden is a legend in the College basketball world with an epic win streak and major success. Sadly he is no longer with …

Some people aren’t natural sharers…..of information that is. And in the business world this lack of sharing of information and knowledge can have a profound effect. People often don’t share for nothing other than they just don’t think about it, or see the point in it. It’s not usually them being malicious. It’s not for …

If you were building a software company from scratch now – no legacy code, no existing team structure, no existing architecture – how would you want to deploy your product or service? Would you want to release whenever you wanted to, in a safe and careful manner, with full automation and rollbacks? And in a way …

I believe a significant part of the role as a manager is to improve the processes, systems and environments the team work in. If you hire great people (which you should) then you basically want to leave them alone to do their work. In many organisations though there are barriers to people getting stuff done. Be these …

Your job as a manager is to remove the nonsense from the work. There will always be bad work, painful work, tough work – to have good work you have to have some bad work. (I’m not talking about illegal or immoral work here – avoid that at all costs) But the nonsense work. The bureaucratic work. …

Here’s a story about someone I know and his idea to follow the path of least resistance. He worked for a farm vehicle parts company and he oversaw the Saturday shift. The thing is, he didn’t like working Saturdays. Neither did his small team. So, they hatched a plan to get out of Saturday working. …

When hiring it’s rare to be able to offer so much money that salary is not an issue. Few companies can do this. If you’re not working in one of these companies, then the reality is most of your competition can offer the same money, if not a tempting shade more. Q : So how …

One of your major opportunities as a manager is to develop the people in your team. People need to feel like the job develops them. People need to feel like they are mastering something and adding value, but they also need to feel like they are growing and developing, and that you care about that …

There are opportunities to learn and grow everywhere for managers. In every interaction, every meeting, every plan, every bit of feedback, from wins, from losses, from hiring, from strategy. You get it. Everywhere. We often just need to look out for these opportunities. That’s the hard part. But once you do start noticing your world …